Spy Artist Prisoner

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An anguished memoir of one man's political struggle and physical resilience.

The Romanian artist George Tomaziu must have anticipated being imprisoned for monitoring German troop movements through Romania during the Second World War.

He may also have imagined that if the Allies won, and if he somehow survived the brutalisation of captivity and torture, his personal fight against Fascism would be acknowledged by his liberated compatriots.

It wasn't. Under the Communist government that came to power in late 1947, he was sent back to prison and stranded there, for 13 years, in the most inhuman conditions.

Against the odds, he survived. This is his story, translated from the French by Jane Reid, whose husband at the British Embassy in Bucharest managed to persuade the Romanians to allow Tomaziu, his wife and child to leave the country. Tomaziu settled in Paris, where he wrote this account but could not find a publisher for it. He died in 1990.